The high flying Denver Nuggets come to the Palace fresh off of a 168 point performance against the lowly Seattle Supersonics. Denver averages 108.8 ppg, but give up a whopping 104.9. The Nuggets are fighting for their playoff lives, currently (40-26) 1 1/2 games behind Golden Stae for the eighth playoff seed.

The Pistons defeated the Nuggets last month in Denver 98-93 behind a double double (16 points 13 boards) from McDyess. A win for Detroit would give them a 4-1 mark on this five game homestand.

The team has fallen into this habit of starting slowly. They seem to want to make things more interesting. Maybe Flip should have the warmups extended by 5 minutes so that they are starting off the games like they should?

Heard that "coach" Karl just let his players play it out with no let up in the 4th as even the scrubs got into the act of running up the score on the Sonics who must of quit defensively....Would be nice if the Pistons played smack down defense and held the Nuggets to below 85!!!

Well, that was certainly a Denver pace...136-120...were Kelly Tripucka and Kiki Vandeweghe in the house, from that 186-184 game? Pistons D in the first half was actually pretty good, as the Nugs scored just 51 to the Pistons' 73(!), and several Denver buckets just came off sloppy turnovers by CB and Rip early in the first quarter. The Zoo Crew was AMAZING in the first half, with 36 points between them! The defense utterly vanished in the second half, but fortunately the lead was big enough to withstand a parade to the rim by Melo and AI. JMax ended up being the only Piston with more than 30 minutes.

The Pistons led 34 - 25 at the end of the first qtr and I posted in Chat that we were on a pace for a 136-100 game. Well our offense kept it consistent but the starters got lax in third qtr possibly thinking the game was over allowed the Nuggets to ring up 69 points in the second half, which was possibly one of the highest totals we have given up in a half this season. As Dumars said, where's the Deef? Well with a fast pace game, TO's will be up for the Pistons and 18 was way above their league leading aveage of 11.5. Billups had 3 in each half, as the Nuggets had 12 steals which kept them within 20 for most of the game.

If I recall Melo and AI had 4 points each in the first half and finished with 27 and 20 respectively. When is the last time we allow a team to shoot 57% and dish out 31 assists and we still won? Well when you shoot 60% and have 42 assists yourself you should win. Oh yeah we controlled the boards too.

Hayes had another impressive game and once again Max had another +20 + differential for the second game in a row. Much to most of the posters chagrin Dixon was a +16. Theo rested for his battle with Ben and Z tomorrow and the rest of the starters should be well rested too.

Back to the winning formula. Our starters take a nice lead and the Zoo Crew breaks it wide open.

This can work in the playoffs.

Stuckey finally hit some real jump shots! This is great news. I thought this was one of his most complete games of the year. He hit a 3 and a nice long jumper. He also got to the rim a couple times as he was aggressively attacking. His 6 assists were highlighted by a spectacular pass to Amir in the lane. And he filled up the stat sheed with a steal and a block.

Prince, our point forward had 9 asissts to only 1 turnover. Let me know if Mello ever does that.

Rip was on fire for a long while.

Sheed made 3 three-pointers that I officially did not approve of... until they went in. His 2 threes when he was trailing were good. He seems to be the best on the team at those. His D was solid as usual.

Chauncey with a double-double, but a rare 6 turnovers. Those first 2 weren't really his fault though as it looked like Rip and Sheed were still waking up.

Maxiell has a heck of a game. 8-11 shooting with a mixture of dunks, post moves, and mid range jumpers. He even racked up a few assists. He shared the team leading 7 boards with Dyess. +23 for the night.

Hayes backed up his previous breakout game with a much more well-rounded game tonight. He was still on fire from deep, but he also passed the ball well, drove into the lane for a nice finish when the Nugs overplayed him. I really really hope that he can be half this good in the playoffs. He seems to have the confidence needed to be good off the bench. Finally the game is catching up with it.

Dixon was adequate. I thought he took good shots, but he was fairly invisible for the amount of time that he was out there (17 minutes). In such a high scoring game, you'd think he could rack up some assists like everyone else. Random unluckiness maybe.

Amir has his usual solid effort and got some nice 2nd quarter minutes.

The first half was one of the most fun halves to watch all year. The 3rd quarter was frustrating and we easily could have let this thing slip away, but we just kept hitting shots. Overall, this was our best shooting night of the year by a mile.